


Trust Falling

by lost_socks



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Consent Issues, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masochism, Naga!Megumi, Oral Sex, Teratophilia, Treat, consensual vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-14 15:32:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18479128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_socks/pseuds/lost_socks
Summary: There's nothing Megumi can do to Joshua that Joshua doesn't want. It's time Megumi understood that.





	Trust Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surskitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surskitty/gifts).



"Think of it," Joshua says, "like a trust fall."

Megumi looks at him dubiously, and Joshua remembers that his Conductor has been dead for even longer than Joshua has, and while he technically gets out in the world more than Joshua does he's not psychically perma-linked into the lives of a few hundred thousand people in the way that Joshua is. There's no reason he would know this. Even so, Joshua sighs. "Teambuilding, Megumi. It's a teambuilding exercise. One person falls, and the other person catches them, and trust is built. Hence the name."

Megumi has the air of one considering his answer very carefully. "I already trust you implicitly, Sir."

"Almost," Joshua says mildly, and Megumi's mouth tightens briefly in a way that's not quite a flinch. 

Good. Joshua presses the advantage, stepping into his Conductor's head. He's not going to imprint anything; his normal boundary is not to interfere with the workings of his second-in-command's mind at all, but this isn't the first iteration of this conversation they've had, and Joshua would very much like to be done having it. Anyway, there can't be much harm in simply drawing attention to something that's already there. His Conductor's got a sadistic streak. There's no sense in pretending he doesn't.

It's a tangle in Megumi's mind, always is when he's in Joshua's presence: love and awe and devotion and desire and terror and a rage that's never quite quelled, all knotted together. All the fastidious order and precision he exercises in every other aspect of his existence falls apart here, in the face of his god; he hides it well most of the time, outwardly as serene as a statue, but inwardly he's a mess.

Joshua picks through the threads, carefully leaving them as he finds them, until he finds the one that he's looking for: a fantasy, entertained only in brief, guilty glimpses by its owner before being buried hastily and deep. Joshua gives it a gentle tug, pulling it to the surface, and when Megumi's thoughts reel back and scramble desperately to push it down again, Joshua holds it, gently but immovably, where it is.

"Sir." Megumi's voice is low and strangled. "I don't—"

"You'd enjoy it," Joshua says. "If you could let yourself."

"Sir—"

"If you could trust me," Joshua adds, all sweetness, "enough to do as I ask."

A true flinch this time—a petty satisfaction, but Joshua's pretty sure he's won at last. He needs this; the city's music has been scraping against his nerves for days. Megumi's always more than willing to sleep with him, which is usually enough to take the edge off when he's slipped out of tune, but right now Joshua's feeling like he's nothing _but_ edges, all of them clashing, and he needs—he needs to be taken apart, so he can be put back together the right way around.

 _You're my Conductor,_ he argued when he first broached the subject. _You're_ My _Conductor. I create the music; you see it played and ordered. Put me back in order, then, inside and out._ But Megumi balked, apparently feeling that disassembling a god was sacrilege even if the god in question explicitly requested it, and Megumi's gone _on_ balking for days. For him that's really quite an achievement of will, and under other circumstances Joshua would applaud him, but honestly, he's being terribly inconvenient about the timing.

Now Joshua leans in close, lets his breath tickle Megumi's ear, just enough that Megumi shivers and breathes a little quicker. "Look at it this way," he murmurs. "Let's both let ourselves fall, and trust we'll catch each other on the way down, hm?"

* * *

It doesn't quite end there—Joshua's won, but Megumi takes a bit more persuading to admit it—but at last, reluctantly, Megumi agrees.

And now Joshua sprawls on the futon in Megumi's quarters, clad in only his boxers, the rest of his clothes discarded on the floor. Megumi sits next to him, his breathing shallow and uncertain as he stares down at his Composer, and Joshua suppresses a sigh. "Megumi, relax. Here." He picks up the knife from the sheets beside him, holds it out, takes Megumi's hand, closes Megumi's fingers gently but firmly around the hilt. He doesn't let go right away; for a moment Megumi doesn't react at all, and then his knuckles whiten with the strength of his grip, muscles going taut under Joshua's fingers until his hand is almost shaking.

Joshua waits until that too has passed, then guides Megumi's hand down to his chest, until the edge of the blade is just resting against his chest.

It shakes for a moment, and then stills. Then the fingertips of Megumi's free hand trail lower, gliding along Joshua's ribs and down across his stomach, tracing a path for the blade to follow. His movements are slow and contemplative, gentle in the promise of pain. He pauses, eyes creasing at the corners for a moment—not in puzzlement, but in wonder—as his hand reaches the waistband of Joshua's boxers, as if he's been so intent on the task before him that he's only now noticed how aroused the object of his focus is by his attentions. His hand brushes lightly over the cloth covering Joshua's cock, already hard, and Joshua can't help shuddering slightly at the touch.

Megumi's hand lingers, drawing lines of exquisite frustration through the cloth. "You want this," he murmurs, sounding... stunned, and really? _Really?_ Joshua could choke him for his obliviousness, except if anyone's getting choked today it's Joshua, _thank you._

Joshua settles for quirking an eyebrow at him and letting his voice go dry, carefully controlled. "Megumi. Do you really think you could do anything to Me that I didn't want? Truly? Do you think I'd have _asked_ if I didn't want?"

Megumi has the look of someone whose world has just inverted itself, dizzy and disoriented, but he manages to pull his tone back to something approaching level. "No, Sir. Please, forgive me my…" He pauses, brow furrowing, contemplative, as he works the boxers down Joshua's hips with excruciating slowness, the softness of the cloth almost unbearable sliding across over-hungry nerves, setting them alight with electricity. "Forgive me," he says again, and there's something new in his voice. "It was… never my intent to doubt You."

In punctuation, his fingers skim along the shaft of Joshua's now-uncovered cock, his thumb pausing to circle the tip thoughtfully, light around the edges and back and forth across the slit. 

Joshua lets a small noise of frustration escape his throat, lets his hips tense, caught between pulling away from the teasing and pressing into it. "It's a little early in the night to talk about forgiveness," he says, and manages to keep his voice mostly light, divorced from the ache rapidly building in his groin and deep in the pit of his stomach. "Ask me after we're done here, hm?"

A faint smile, and a briefly bowed head, Megumi's hair falling to cover his face. "As you say, Sir." Megumi's fingers trace a path, again, down between Joshua's ribs, and this time the knife follows, the flat of the blade cold and hard and smooth, and that too is somewhere between sweet enticement and torment. If Joshua moved suddenly, pushed himself up or even just drew a sudden sharp breath, the knife would slip. 

He _wants_ to move.

He makes himself hold still, and settles for saying, "You're not going to get in very far with the flat, you know—"

And then the knife turns and slides in, just below his sternum, and Joshua stops talking.

Megumi is reverentially careful about the cut, and as slow and deliberate in his actions as he's been about the rest. For a moment the pain is all there is, Joshua's world collapsing to a bright, strange point that sings in a pitch almost too high for his hearing.

And then Megumi's other hand returns to Joshua's cock, and begins to stroke again, up and down the sides, squeezing gently, then testing the head with more force. Joshua's hips buck at the sudden rush of heat, seeking more; the motion jars the knife blade still lodged in him, drives it deeper, and the shock of the pain against the compulsion of _need_ makes something snap, blanks his mind. Yes. This. This is—

"I'm sorry, Sir." Megumi's hand loosens its grip, and the knife withdraws, and Joshua's blinking and empty in the loss of both, old memories of pulse and adrenaline racing. He starts to sit up, something acerbic and furious on his tongue about the presumption—the _presumption_ of apologizing for something that was asked, when he could have gone immaterial or blinked out of the room or simply struck Megumi down where he stood, any time he no longer cared for what was happening.

But Megumi's hand is flat on Joshua's chest, fingers spread but carefully avoiding the incision, not quite pushing Joshua back down but strongly suggesting he not move. Joshua looks down at the hand for a moment, startled, and then something shifts on the bed and there's the curl of a snake's tail, sliding up over his hip.

"If we're going to do this," Megumi says, quietly, "it's best if You hold still, Sir."

For once, Joshua has no immediate answer.

Megumi's transformation into naga form is slow and sensuous, his eyes blinking into a distinctly inhuman shade of yellow set with narrow, slitted pupils as his face relaxes in a way it rarely does, and Joshua thinks: this is what it looks like when his Conductor lets himself be something other than a servant. Oh. 

Megumi's tail extends as he transforms, wandering almost lazily over Joshua's abdomen and then making its way steadily beneath him, lifting his hips, and Joshua lets out a breath. The cut left by the knife still burns, but it's overwhelmed by the sensation of snake scales shifting over and around him. Megumi must have oiled his scales with something beforehand; they're faintly slick, gliding easily wherever he chooses to send them.

The tail coils around again, up and over, broadening beneath him as it moves, and then its tip slithers down to Joshua's groin. It pauses there to skim along the length of his cock and tease at the tip, and Joshua bucks again, or tries to, but this time Megumi's coils constrict around him, thick and implacable, and his hips are held fast.

It's not unpleasant at all, but it's—unfamiliar, being so held. There's something grounding about it, bringing him into his body and into the present moment and pinning him there.

The tail keeps moving, fresh dampness on its tip as it drifts down over his balls and then pushes underneath him again, between his legs. It lingers at his entrance, and for a dizzy instant Joshua thinks Megumi's actually going to presume to fuck him with the tip, but after a contemplative pause it moves on. Joshua isn't actually sure in that instant if he's disappointed, or if Megumi has only narrowly escaped erasure. It could have gone either way, he thinks.

Up from underneath him, along his side, wrapped over one shoulder and around his chest and over the other until his limbs are thoroughly tangled, and all the time fresh, oil-slick scales sliding inexorably over him as Megumi uncoils the length of himself. Joshua's truly held now, and he tenses against his bonds experimentally, finds Megumi's grip strong enough he'd need to resort to something considerably more powerful than physical strength to break it.

He could, of course. He could any time. But he wanted this, he does want this, and maybe later—maybe another time, Megumi will trust in that enough that Joshua will be able to fight back without crushing this cautious new boldness. For now he clamps down hard on all impulse to lash out. There's something pleasant, in this moment, about imagining he couldn't, about imagining himself genuinely overpowered.

Megumi rather destroys the illusion by leaning over him with cautious concern in his eyes, which have temporarily blinked back to a human brown. "Sir, are you all r—"

"Megumi, trust me," Joshua says. "If I object, you'll know about it."

Megumi's voice is careful. "Understood, Sir."

Joshua could laugh at the solemn formality of that, in the circumstances. He's often found Megumi's worship stifling, but just now it's—different. Megumi reveres him, and Megumi obeys, so thoroughly that he's pushing past every iota of his conscious will to do _this,_ and there's something exhilirating in that. It's power, of an entirely different kind than Joshua normally wields, and it's heady. "Well, then?" he asks, and lets the corners of his mouth turn up. "Carry on."

Megumi picks up the knife once more, turns it over and over, studying the blade. There's no blood left from the cut it inflicted, they're too high up in frequency for that, but there's a hum of static around it which he listens to, head tilted for a moment and face intent, before sweeping it away with a finger. Then he nods, and turns his attention back to Joshua's skin, and presses the blade slowly, deliberately, into Joshua's stomach.

Joshua's used to pain. There are hundreds of thousands of people in his city, and the music ties him to all of them: all they want, all they fear, all they feel, as if it were a part of him, as if _they_ were part of him. People hurt all the time. He's used to pain.

He thought he was used to pain, but this is a new kind of agony: being entirely in his own flesh, and held still, and the knife sliding in. Megumi is meticulously careful as he peels back skin and slices muscle, even as Joshua's self-control fractures and he spasms and struggles against Megumi's coils, the memory of a pulse thumping in his ears and breath ragged in his throat.

He'd expected Megumi would falter at this point, expected to be disappointed, but Megumi seems to be finding his balance now, his eyes back to snakelike and staying that way. He dips his fingers inside to pluck at Joshua's music like he's testing the strings of an instrument, his head tilted and face intent with thoughtful, almost academic detachment as he listens to the effects of the knife and the pressure and the tension on the quality and timbre of the sound. Test and cut and test again, retuning to perfection. His hands roam gently but mercilessly through everywhere that hands should not be: sliding along bones, pressing at muscles, diving under ribs to prod at the surface of lungs, curling through loops of intestine. _Everywhere,_ and the world is bright and dark and fast and slow at once, and Joshua can feel the air moving through him with every shallow breath.

Then one hand slips out, slides between skin and scales, and returns to the head of Joshua's cock as Megumi's tail slowly shifts and begins to work itself around the sides.

It's too much. It's _too much,_ pleasure and pain and all of his boundaries crossed and broken. Joshua throws his head back and cries out, and then Megumi's mouth is pressed against his, and the tongue that flicks between Joshua's lips is long and thin and forked at the tip, skimming in quick bursts behind teeth and over the roof of his mouth, testing and tasting. Joshua kisses him back, returning fire, putting into it all the force he's holding back everywhere else, devouring—

Megumi pulls back, and Joshua attempts—as much as he presently can attempt—to lunge after him, but then Megumi's hands, slick with precome and who knows what else, are on his face, and his thumbs are pressing into the corners of Joshua's mouth to hold his jaw open, and then Megumi's fingers are diving past his teeth, pressing down his tongue, reaching into his throat, and Joshua can taste himself on them, his physicality and his music, strange and salty and sweet, and he sucks at it, fierce. Megumi plucks at another strand of music at the back of Joshua's throat, pulls like he's unwinding a ball of thread. The sense of it quivers straight down Joshua's spine, and for an instant he's unraveling, coming apart at the seams, the world going white around the edges. Megumi's hand pulls back too soon, staticky off-key notes winding around his fingers, and Joshua slumps, panting for air that his body has, for a moment, forgotten that it doesn't really need.

They stare at each other, gazes caught for a moment, and there's something viciously hungry in Megumi's face that Joshua has never seen there before—not directed at him, not like this. His Conductor sways slightly, a snake watching his prey, and his coils begin to contract, and Joshua tenses, gathering psychic energy up, ready to strike. His body's not precisely up for a fight just now, but it scarcely needs to be; a thought will be enough to put Megumi down _hard_ if he needs to.

A part of him is tempted not to—a part of him thinks it would be far more interesting not to, and see where that goes—but he did make Megumi a promise. _Trust that I'll catch you._

He should probably keep it. This time, at least.

"Megumi," he warns quietly.

Megumi blinks, once, twice, first snake's lids and then human ones falling over his eyes as his irises flip from yellow back to brown, pupils collapsing back to round dots. He's silent a moment, his gaze roving over Joshua's body and then back to his face, and then swallows hard. His coils relax slightly, loosening their deathgrip. "Sir."

Joshua just raises his eyebrows and tilts his head slightly. "Still with me?"

Megumi bows his head, briefly closing his eyes, and his tail adjusts itself smoothly as he slides himself down on the bed. His hands make one more pass over and through every inch of Joshua's insides as he moves, every second of it ticking by like a century. But there's something in his touch this time that's—not quite numbing, but it soothes, pulling the pain into harmony with the body around it, making the overwhelming into something bearable, and Joshua's breath begins to come easier.

Megumi lowers his head, and his hair brushes soft against Joshua's thighs as he opens his mouth to Joshua's cock, and Joshua arches as much as he can with the coils still holding him, which isn't much.

Megumi's eyes may have returned to human, but his tongue hasn't. The twin pinpricks of the forked tip dart along the underside in curious exploration, there and then gone, there and then gone.

Then Megumi's mouth closes over the head. Joshua tries to thrust, can't, but it doesn't matter; Megumi slides slowly forward as he takes in the shaft, pulling it into his throat without preamble. Well. Snakes do, Joshua thinks, make a habit of swallowing their prey whole. A quiet laugh that's almost a giggle escapes him at that thought, and then he doesn't think about anything much for a bit except the sensations of Megumi's throat taking him in, closing and convulsing around him, and the pleasure welling up in him and gradually cresting to a peak.

Joshua doesn't usually bother much one way or the other about his own orgasms. They're a pleasant enough afterthought to the build and the tension and the desperate ache of need, but they're rarely much more than that. He has them, because he'll go on being tense if he doesn't, and because they have a brief effect on his frequency that Megumi finds rewarding to bask in, but for his own part, compared to everything else he is, they're rarely all that interesting.

This one's something different. In this moment he's _here,_ more fully in his body than he's ever been, before his death or after. In this instant he's not the city, he's not the music, he is bone and severed muscle and torn skin and still-pumping lungs and a still-beating heart, and everything hurts and he _wants_ this. When he comes, it crashes over and through him, leaves his mind empty and his body light and the world singing in his ears, and he lies still, feeling the aftershocks ripple down his limbs, and thinks: oh. So that's what people go on about.

* * *

Sometime later, a moment or an hour, Megumi carefully begins to untangle his tail from Joshua's limbs, and Joshua lets out a long, slow, careful breath and with a thought begins undoing the knife's work, knitting flesh back together. He looks up, meets Megumi's eyes. Megumi is sitting at his side and staring down at him, brow creased, his disorientation humming through his frequency. He's stunned at what he's done, stunned more by its ending: taken apart a god and lived, and clearly not displeased in the process.

Joshua smirks up at him, only a little dizzily. "And there we are," he says. "Don't you feel trusted now?"

"I—" Megumi clears his throat, visibly searching for words, and his voice is hoarse and tired when he speaks, but there's awe in it. "Yes, Sir. Far—far more than I deserve."

"Deserving's beside the point," Joshua says, and holds out a hand, though he's not up to much in the way of movement yet. "Come here, and help put me back together. I'm feeling entirely too lazy to do it by myself." 

Megumi obeys without question, leaning in, and Joshua lets out a small, luxuriant sigh as cool healing energy begins to hum through him. "Told you I'd catch you," he murmurs, watching his Conductor's face.

"Sir, I—there was a moment, I wanted to—" _Tear You to shreds,_ Megumi does not say, but his frequency sparks with restrained violence.

"And I told you that you'll never do anything to me I don't want." His hand drifts to his Conductor's hair, and he trails it through the long, smooth strands, enjoying the feel of them twisted around his fingers. "You don't have to trust in yourself for that, Megumi. You only have to trust in _Me._ "

A long pause, and then, quietly: "Thank You, Sir."

"You did well," Joshua says. His hand leaves Megumi's hair with some regret, traces down Megumi's side to the spot where the curve of hip meets snake scales. "I like you like this. You should do it more often." He lets a note of too-innocent curiosity into his voice. "You know, I've always wanted to know about your Noise form—do you have two—"

A frantic cough from Megumi. "Yes, Sir," he says, too hastily, and Joshua is absurdly delighted to see his face turn pink. He's going to be shy about this? _Now?_ As if he genuinely believes Joshua didn't know perfectly well already that his naga form, in good serpentine fashion, had dual cocks tucked away in a slit under his tail.

"We should definitely explore that, then," Joshua murmurs, and gives him a wicked grin. "And you've more than earned a reward. What do you say?"

Megumi hesitates. "I think, Sir, that Your current state might be a slight impairment to any explorations You wish to pursue. At present."

Joshua laughs, low and pleased. "All the more reason to patch me up quickly, then, hm?"


End file.
